The long journey of Beatties stationery
In February one of these articles began by asking: “Can there be any other business that has been a part of the local scene as long as Pinder’s has?”
At the time I knew of nothing that could match its 130-plus years here.
A reader soon reminded me of a local firm that has been around even longer: Beatties, here for a century-and-a-half-plus.
The roots of today’s Beatties (earlier known as Bixby-Beatties) can be traced back to 1863. The city directory for that year included an ad for the firm of Izard and Bixby, “Book Sellers & Stationers, Dealers in Music, Periodicals and Newspapers …”
Co-owners Henry Izard and G.W. Bixby were brothers-in-law who came to St. Catharines from Stratford in the early 1860s. Here they established their business in the Odd Fellows Building that used to overlook the St. Paul Street-Ontario Street intersection downtown.
Izard and Bixby remained in business together until Izard left the firm in 1874, after which the firm became simply “D.W. Bixby, Bookseller and Stationer.” Bixby died in 1908, whereupon the firm continued under the direction of his widow.
However, by 1925 Mrs. Bixby was no longer able to run the business by herself. She then reached out to a young man named Lawrence Beattie. He had been employed in the firm in the previous decade but by the mid-1920s was working in a Woolworth’s store in Quebec.
Young Beattie answered the call and returned to St. Catharines as Mrs. Bixby’s assistant. Just one year later he purchased the firm from her, and starting in 1930 the business became the Bixby-Beattie Co. Two years later, the firm moved to 132-136 St. Paul St., a location where the firm — known simply as Beatties since the late-1940s — remained for most of the next 50 years.
That is where our old photo this week was taken, in December 1942. The colourful scene features a horse-drawn delivery wagon used by the company until the end of the Second World War, parked in front of the store. The ad for the company that featured this photo specified that this free delivery service was in conformity with wartime delivery regulations regarding use of gasoline and rubber.
After the war, Beattie’s continued under the direction of Lawrence Beattie until nephew Roger Beattie purchased the business in 1968. Shortly after that the firm began to expand beyond its original downtown St. Catharines base, opening stores first in Grantham Township and later, for varying periods of time, in Fort Erie, Welland and Niagara Falls. The most recent development began in 2006 as Beatties moved first its administrative offices and later its St. Catharines retail site out to today’s west St. Catharines location at 399 Vansickle Rd.
And the former site on St. Paul Street, where the horse and wagon were standing in that 1942 photo? That building is gone. Where it once stood is today just a large open space in front of the Rankin Gateway to Meridian Centre.